12:02
Tieng Anh Vui
Conservative MP Tim Yeo is to stand aside from his role as chairman of a powerful committee while claims he used it to help a private company influence Parliament are being investigated.
The MP rejects suggestions he coached a businessman employed by a firm with which he has financial links on what to say in evidence to the committee.
He says he has acted "in accordance" with the code of conduct for MPs.
Labour had said it was "difficult to see" how Mr Yeo could continue.
Mr Yeo, chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, was secretly filmed by Sunday Times investigators posing as representatives of a fictional energy company seeking to hire his services.
In the recording, he appears to suggest that he told a businessman what to say to his committee before he appeared before MPs last month.
'Thorough investigation'
At the meeting, Mr Yeo publicly excused himself from questioning GB Railfreight managing director John Smith because of his acknowledged conflict of interest as a non-executive director and shareholder in its parent firm Eurotunnel.
Mr Yeo's work for the company is declared in the MPs' register of financial interests and he mentioned it at the start of the committee hearing into the bio-energy industry.
Ross Hawkins says Tim Yeo "intends to contest these allegations very vigorously indeed"
But in the secret recording, the MP claims what he did for GB Railfreight "in private was another matter altogether" and he "was able to tell him (Mr Smith) in advance what he should say".
The MP, who has referred himself to the Parliamentary standards commissioner, told BBC Wales he welcomed a "thorough investigation" and was "absolutely confident" the watchdog would find he had not done anything wrong.
Mr Yeo said he had chatted briefly with Mr Smith five days before the hearing during a visit to one of the firm's freight trains but the suggestion he had told him what to say was "totally untrue".
"I did not coach John Smith as the paper alleges," he said.
"He's not a paying client as the paper alleges and like many business executives giving evidence to select committees he actually sought advice from the public affairs company which his company retains for that purpose."
The cross-party committee is due to hold a hearing on the oil industry on Tuesday.
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